But Cortez Masto, with the aid of unions she has worked with for years, was able to counter that argument. “The question of who fought for us during the pandemic really matters to us,” Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of Nevada’s Culinary Union, told me. Pappageorge represents sixty thousand hospitality workers, mostly Latinos, employed by hotels and casinos in and around Las Vegas. In 2020, ninety-eight per cent of the union’s members lost their jobs. (About a fifth are still unemployed.) Pappageorge told me that Cortez Masto made it a priority for them to receive unemployment benefits, mortgage forbearance, and health care. “She’s been a leader that has been behind us,” he said. “The idea that you’re in the worst health crisis in the last century, which became an economic crisis, but wouldn’t provide health care for folks is just crazy. That’s where a lot of the Republicans were, and the senator was a champion for us on that issue.”
Until precinct-level vote data become available, the extent to which Latinos can be credited for Cortez Masto’s win remains unclear. When her victory speech drew to a close, the crowd dispersed and people in the audience got on with their day. For Diana Valles, the president of the Culinary Union, that meant driving back to her neighborhood to cure ballots—insuring that her community’s votes were duly counted. Valles, who had stood next to Cortez Masto onstage, told me that she could identify with her family’s story. A native of Chihuahua, Valles had moved to Las Vegas in the late eighties and found a job as a guest-room attendant at the Stardust Casino. She raised her children by herself, built a strong reputation as an organizer, and rose through the union’s ranks. She had helped steer the union through the pandemic, and felt that Cortez Masto’s policies saved lives. “She stood up and said, ‘I’m here with you,’ ” Valles said. “That’s one of the things that people never forget: the people who are with you in the hardest times of your life. She’s been with us. She has always been one of us.”